Frames with errors are flushed from the packet buffer memory, good frames are pushed onto the DMA AXI interface.
The packet buffer monitors the data flow from the MAC receiver to create packet pushes into the packet buffer. At the end of the received frame, the status and statistics information are stored along side the packet for use when the frame is read out.
Good Frame
The DMA only begins to fetch packets from the packet buffer when the status and statistics for the Ethernet frame are available. If the frame has a good status, the three status and statistics words of information are used to read the frame from the packet memory and written to system memory by the DMA. After the last frame data is transferred to the packet buffer, the status and statistics are updated to the controller's registers.
Bad Frame
When programmed in full store and forward mode, if the frame has an error, the frame data is immediately flushed from the packet buffer memory allowing subsequent frames to use the newly opened space. The status and statistics for bad frames are written to the system buffer and used to update the controller's status and statistics registers.
To accommodate the status and statistics associated with each frame, three words per packet are reserved at the end of the packet data. When a packet is bad and is dropped, the status and statistics is the only information stored for that packet.
The packet buffer can detect a full condition and an overflow condition can also be detected. If this occurs, subsequent packets are dropped and an overflow interrupt is raised.